Animal Research

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A vacuum tube holds a blood-fed strain of Aedes aegypti mosquito in place under a microscope in a research lab insectary in the Hanson Biomedical Sciences Building at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on May 17, 2016. (Photo by Jeff Miller/UW-Madison)

Monkeys who catch Zika virus through bites from infected mosquitoes develop infections that look like human Zika cases, and may help researchers understand the many ways Zika can be transmitted.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison infected rhesus macaques at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center with Zika virus one of two ways: by allowing mosquitoes carrying the virus to feed on the monkeys or by injecting virus under the skin, the common method for infecting animals in laboratory studies.

The differences between the resulting infections — reported today (Dec. 13, 2017) in the journal Nature Communications — were subtle, but will be useful as scientists continue to learn more about Zika after a high-profile epidemic in the Americas caused grave birth defects. Read more.

A gene-edited pig with an NF-1 mutation. Photo credit: Jeff Miller, University of Wisconsin-Madison

A team of scientists wants to accelerate research into a genetic disorder by using CRISPR to copy unique mutations from affected children into pigs.

When Charles Konsitzke and Dhanu Shanmuganayagam first met, they were both just trying to get some peace and quiet. It was early 2014, and they were representing the University of Wisconsin-Madison at a fancy event to promote the university’s research to local politicians. After hours of talking to senators, Shanmuganayagam was fried, and went for a walk to clear his head. That’s when he bumped into Konsitzke, an administrator at the University of Wisconsin’s Biotechnology Center. They introduced themselves, and discussed their work. Shanmuganayagam said that he ran a facility that rears miniature pigs, which are genetically engineered to carry mutations found in human genetic disorders. Scientists can study the mini-pigs to better understand those diseases.

“And I said: I have a project for you,” Konsitzke recalls.

Konsitzke’s son Mason, now aged 7, was born with little brown birthmarks on his buttocks. Many kids have one or two of these café-au-lait spots and at first, Konsitzke thought they were cute. But after more appeared, he did some research and found that such spots are a common symptom of neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF-1)—an incurable inherited disease. Around Mason’s first birthday, a pediatrician confirmed the diagnosis. Read more.

Scientists at Texas BioMedical Research Institute in San Antonio are using a type of primate to help prevent birth defects caused by the Zika virus. Texas BioMed is using four marmosets as its animal model for Zika infection. Virologist Dr. Jean Patterson said Zika infection in marmosets is similar to that in humans.

“Like humans, they develop almost immediate Viremia — meaning they have virus in their blood — and, for the males, after the virus declines in blood it then goes into semen, saliva and blood,” she said. Read more.

In the fight against brain damage caused by stroke, researchers have turned to an unlikely source of inspiration: hibernating ground squirrels.

While the animals’ brains experience dramatically reduced blood flow during hibernation, just like human patients after a certain type of stroke, the squirrels emerge from their extended naps suffering no ill effects. Now, a team of NIH-funded scientists has identified a potential drug that could grant the same resilience to the brains of ischemic stroke patients by mimicking the cellular changes that protect the brains of those animals. The study was published in The FASEB Journal, the official journal of the Foundation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

“For decades scientists have been searching for an effective brain-protecting stroke therapy to no avail. If the compound identified in this study successfully reduces tissue death and improves recovery in further experiments, it could lead to new approaches for preserving brain cells after an ischemic stroke,” said Francesca Bosetti, Ph.D., Pharm.D., program director at the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).

An ischemic stroke occurs when a clot cuts off blood flow to part of the brain, depriving those cells of oxygen and nutrients like the blood sugar glucose that they need to survive. Nearly 800,000 Americans experience a stroke every year and 87 percent of those are ischemic strokes. Read more.

The radial-arm water maze is a common test to assess working memory in rodents.Photo credit: Sciencemag.org irin717/iStock

Whether caused by a car accident that slams your head into the dashboard or repeated blows to your cranium from high-contact sports, traumatic brain injury can be permanent. There are no drugs to reverse the cognitive decline and memory loss, and any surgical interventions must be carried out within hours to be effective, according to the current medical wisdom. But a compound previously used to enhance memory in mice may offer hope: Rodents who took it up to a month after a concussion had memory capabilities similar to those that had never been injured. Read more.

Scientists call our ability to understand another person’s thoughts—to intuit their desires, read their intentions, and predict their behavior—theory of mind. It’s an essential human trait, one that is crucial to effective social interaction. But where did it come from?

Working with rhesus macaque monkeys, researchers in Winrich Freiwald’s Laboratory of Neural Systems at The Rockefeller University have discovered tantalizing clues about the origins of our ability to understand what other people are thinking. As reported in Science on May 18, Freiwald and postdoc Julia Sliwa have identified areas in the brains of these primates that are exclusively dedicated to analyzing social interactions. And they may have evolved into the neural circuitry that supports theory of mind in the human brain. Read more.

(U.C. DAVIS) – Imagine a world where maladies such as cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s Disease, or sickle cell anemia no longer exist. While the U.S. is far from achieving this lofty goal, it recently came a step closer at the California National Primate Research Center (CNPRC), where scientists have efficiently used CRISPR/Cas9 technology to modify the genes of rhesus macaque embryos.

The research, recently published in the latest edition of Human Molecular Genetics, paves the way for future studies where the possibility of birthing gene-edited monkeys that can serve as models for new therapies is greatly increased.

CRISPR, an acronym for Clustered Regularly-Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, is essentially a DNA segment that scientists can manipulate using a system known as CRISPR/Cas9 to edit the genes within organisms. CRISPR/Cas9 seeks and targets specific genes in organisms that are linked to diseases. It does this by utilizing a single strand of ribonucleic acid (RNA), a nucleic acid present in all living cells, as a guide to target specific genes for editing. Read more.